cashew | Pokévengers - Repost - Chapter the Third (Reply)

This is the last of the older stuff before I veer off in a new direction. Some editing had to happen. A lot of deleting. A lot of restructuring. This took a long time and I'm still not sure if flows into the next parts correctly, but I tried? (Also am prepping for the coming NaNo, so I'm trying to get as much of this stuff out as possible.)

Poké-cast this chapter

Steve:
Shiny Braviary

Wanda:
Delphox

Natasha:
Shiny Aromatise

Clint:
Decidueye

Sam:
Staraptor

Tony:
Scizor

Bucky:
Lucario

Previously on Pokévengers...
Chapter the First
Chapter the Second

Leaving things to Clint, it turns out, meant that Steve woke up the next day to find that their hut has somehow acquired a second adjacent room that contained a bucket of apples, an sanded down tree stump, a small crescent fountain, and random pots of star-shaped flowers. The tree stump was wide enough for them to all find a seat around it with room to spare.

"What do you think?" Clint asked.

"I'm speechless," Steve replied as he continued to survey his surroundings.

"I even got us a temporary prisoner's cell," Clint gestured to one particularly large window with his wing. Steve looked out of the indicated window to find an identical looking circular hut with its front half replaced by wooden stakes that ran from thatched ceiling to floor. Inside the hut was their attacker from yesterday, munching away on an apple.

Briefly distracted by the mechanics of a toothless Pokemon biting into the hard flesh of an apple, Steve refocused his attention back to the base. Clint was still waiting for a verdict.

"It'll work as a central command," Steve agreed, "but where are we going store our materiel?"

Clint puffed with pride at Steve's approval before saying, "Follow me."

Outside of their new headquarters, Clint led the way to where Natasha and Wanda were hovering outside an odd adobe dome. Large scale patterns were carved into its walls and its roof looked like an oversized horned head of an antelope. Under the roof was a service window that housed a large, kangaroo like Pokemon, who was engaged in conversation with Wanda.

As they drew closer, Steve caught the tail end of the exchange.

"I won't need a monthly rental rate," the kangaroo-like Pokemon said in response. "If you can help me move the items, then whatever room you clear out, you can use as storage."

"Wonderful," Wanda agreed and sealed the deal. "It has been a pleasure working with you."

"What's happening?" Steve asked as the haggling ended.

"Steve," Wanda greeted with a wave, "Aunt Kangaskhan is offering to help store our things in exchange for help with organizing her warehouse."

"That's very generous of you, ma'am," Steve told the large Pokemon, who he assumed must be "Aunt Kangaskhan".

"No, it's my pleasure to help out such polite youngsters," Aunt Kangaskhan replied in turn, a wide warm smile gracing her features as she responded. "It's so rare to see new comers in this village these days."

Steve latched onto the detail and asked, "Were there more travelers before?"

"Oh yes," Aunt Kangaskhan answered with an enthusiastic sigh. "I remember when the Kangaskhan storage just started, we would have new clients coming in at least twice a week, sometimes even more. Travelers from out of town used our services the most, you know. And they would share their traveling adventures with me when I helped them to move their packages into storage.

"Then, sometime in the past twenty years, the travelers slowed down. At first, I didn't notice, but then one day I was moving the inventory and realized, would you know it, there's all this empty space that's just collecting dust."

"So, the items currently in storage are all yours, then?"

"Oh, no, they're old inventory that never got picked up," Aunt Kangaskhan replied with a gentle wave of her paw. "I couldn't throw them out, why, who knows when their owners will come back? And Kangaskhan Storage is proud to have never lost a single item left in our care! But it does get so dull without new travelers coming into town."

Here, Aunt Kangaskhan paused for breath and hung her head, possibly pondering her lonely state.

"We'll come around more often in the future," Natasha promised and gave the warehouse keeper a reassuring pat.

Aunt Khangaskhan smiled endearingly in response.

Then the humans walked off, bidding their goodbye and regrouped to mull over the newest information

"Either the other towns have disappeared somehow or something is blocking the roads," Natasha said as soon as they returned to their headquarters.

"If there's something keeping the Pokemon from moving around, we can test it ourselves," Clint suggested. "Let's follow the road out until we see what the roadblock is."

"Who will look after the prisoner?" Wanda asked.

"Wanda and Natasha, you keep an eye out on our prisoner and see if you can get anymore information. If there's a stray thought or if you," — Steve paused to make eye contact with Natasha — "can get anything besides 'Heil Hydra' out of it, then do it. Meanwhile, Clint can take periodic flyovers to check for roadblocks. I'm going to set up a perimeter and start patrolling for any immediate threats." Like another attack by Hydra goons.

"Sounds solid, Cap," Clint concurred as Wanda and Natasha nodded their agreement.

"Good. Let's break for now and reconvene in..." Steve trailed off as he realized that as a Pokemon, he had no way to access any form of precise time keeping. In the end, he settled for, "...at sunset."

Without further ado, they left the room and headed to complete their respective jobs.

It only took until late afternoon for Steve's plan to go awry. Clint had not uncovered any new clusters of civilization and their Hydra prisoner remained tight billed. However, a new comer crashed into Steve, literally, when it fell onto Steve in the middle of his patrol route.

Steve groaned a bit under the body weight, but then went silent when the creature atop him made a pained noise in a familiar voice.

"Sam?" Steve asked as he turned his head to look at the new arrival.

He took in the avian body, lined with black and white markings, which sported a curled crest of feathers atop its head. The crest of feathers flopped over a pair of sharp eyes that squinted together in pain.

"Ow."

"Sam!"

Steve was certain that the bird Pokemon had spoken in Sam's voice. Wriggling out from under Sam's still uncooperative body, he tried again.

"Sam, is that you?"

"Aw, shi—Steve?"

Sam pried his eyes opening and peered through the pain at Steve, his gaze mirroring the same fragile hope that was blossoming in Steve's chest.

"Fuck. Where are we? Why are you a bird? Why am I bird?"

"Hey, take a breath," Steve said.

Spreading out his wings, Steve tried to help nudge Sam back to an upright position. After a few futile attempts, Sam settled for rolling onto his stomach, then pushed himself onto his legs with his own wings. It was much more effective.

"Yeah, shit—I thought we were all gonna die," Sam grumbled once he was upright. Then, he paused and looked himself over in detail before turning his attention onto Steve, and added, "Are we sure we're not dead?"

"Sam, what do you remember?" Steve urged.

"Uh..." Sam's gaze turned inward as he recalled his recent memories. "We were investigating something in Wakanda. I think it was some kind of container. Then Stark showed up and...Shit! Barnes!"

Steve felt his body go cold at the mention of Bucky's name.

"What happened to Bucky?"

"He wasn't in the cryo chamber," Sam answered, his eyes wide and a little panicked. "We called up Stark, but he swore he wasn't behind it. So we all went out looking for the tracker signal in the container unit—fuck, T'Challa is one paranoid b—"

"Sam, the container," Steve squawked before Sam could get distracted.

"Yeah, and...and...shit." The wild look in Sam's eyes faded into something that resembled defeat. "I can't remember anything after that. It's all a haze, just...black."

"Yeah, sounds familiar," Steve agreed in a steady voice that surprised him given the crawling dread that roiled away in his gut. "None of us could remember even that much."

"Who else is here?"

"Wanda, Natasha, and Clint," Steve listed. "Those are the ones I've found so far. There might be even more people here."

"About that," Sam interjected, finally sounding more like himself, "where is here?"

Steve weighed his words carefully before finally answering with a question of his own.

"Sam, have you ever heard of Pokemon?"

Sam responded both better and worse than Steve anticipated.

After the initial report, where Clint had given him a sit rep of the past few days, Sam honest to goodness screeched.

Once the sound of a traumatized bird had stopped echoing off the walls of their headquarters, Sam took a deep breath and held it, eyes closing in some meditative trance before slowly easing the air back out of his lungs.

Then, opening his eyes, Sam informed Steve in deadpan, "I honestly cannot say whether this or the time on The Raft was worse. This is me, telling you right now, that I cannot in good conscience say that The Raft is the worst thing that has happened to me since I've known you."

Steve thought that it was a rather fair assessment and hung his head in shame.

"OK, now that we've established that this is a hell hole," Sam said, his voice still devoid of tonal clues, "and that Steve and Wanda have been here for two days, when the hell did you two" — Sam cut off just long enough to gesture at Clint and Natasha — "get here?"

"I came to in a cave about four days ago," Clint answered. "Natasha was right next to me in a circle of mushrooms."

"We've been making rounds trying to see if we could map the area in a meaningful way," Natasha picked up where Clint stopped. "I found these two" — she paused to wave at Steve then Wanda — "wandering the same cave system we woke up in, albeit on a much lower level."

"There were more levels?" Steve asked on impulse.

He was sure that when he and Wanda worked their way through the cave system there hadn't been a way up.

Natasha shushed him with a paw and moved on.

"At the end of each of the three areas that we explored contain a one-way portal back to town. So far we have no idea how those portals work, but they're definitely not natural."

"And those things don't exist in the games," Clint piped up again, "so I'm pretty certain we're not in a Pokémon game...in the literal sense."

"But that doesn't mean the world we're in isn't artificial," Natasha added. "Too many things in this world function as if they've been designed."

"Is it possible," Wanda began, finally joining the discussion, "that this world is created by one of Infinity Stones that Thor talked about? Maybe the one that gave me my powers?"

"And why would the Tesseract send us here?" Natasha asked.

Silence fell as they brainstormed. Between the sparse intelligence Sam could provide on the cause of their arrival and what they could piece together about this world, the bigger picture was still little more than a foggy mess.

"Sam, you mentioned that Tony was with us before we got sent here, right?" Steve asked. When Sam nodded, Steve continued, "Then it's possible that Tony could be in this world, too."

The rest of the group made various faces of distaste at the possibility.

"Cap, I know you and Stark made up or whatever, but..." Clint trailed off in his disapproval before hissing a frustrated sigh, his feathers puffing up in agitation.

"He's not unreasonable," Steve defended his once friend and now tentative ally.

Clint scoffed in response. Clint, out of all of them, had been the least willing to forgive Stark. Perhaps it was because of his age, or because Clint was the only one who had lost access to his family.

"I have to at least try to find him," Steve tried again. "If we can find Tony or anyone else, it would be an asset. If this world was programed then there has to be a way to undo it. And there's no better engineer than Tony."

"You're right, we need to expand our search radius and we need a long term solution for the Hydra prisoners," Natasha agreed, offering her support when Clint remained silent.

"Wait, prisoners? Hydra?" Sam asked.

"I may have left out the bit about Nazi Pokemon. We're not sure about that yet," Clint finally broke out of his silent fuming.

"Aren't there those Pokeball things that you can use?" Sam continued his questioning.

"We are not using those," Steve jumped in before they could rehash the ethics of imprisoning Pokemon in balls.

"And I'm pretty sure we can't find them here," Clint muttered. "This world is probably based on the Mystery Dungeon series—"

"Dude, stop. I had to watch those cartoons with my niece," Sam raised a wing in front of Clint and gestured for silence. "I do not need a nerd rundown on everything Pokemon."

Clint shrugged diplomatically.

"OK, new plan: Sam and I will take shifts guarding our prisoner for now until we come up with a long term solution. Clint, Natasha and Wanda, you guys start searching for any signs of new Pokemon. You found me and Wanda, maybe you can find Tony, too," Steve ordered.

"You're assuming he'll want to help us," Clint objected.

In contrast, Natasha and Wanda silently nodded their agreement.

"And if you do see any glowing stones," Steve added over Clint's objection, "bring it back to the base. We don't want it in Hydra's hands."

Steve and Sam were in the middle of trading prisoner shifts when their plan was disrupted once again.

A black and blue colored Pokemon that reminded Steve of a beagle fell out of nowhere and slammed into the roof of the prisoner's cell, then slid to the ground with a dull thump. However, it quickly jumped up on its two hind legs and raised its front paws up in a defensive boxer's stance.

The reason for the Pokemon's defensiveness was soon apparent as another red, metallic, insectoid Pokemon flew into view. It descended on the beagle Pokemon with one large claw extended, aiming an attack at the grounded creature.

Instinctively, Steve jumped between the beagle Pokemon and the attacking insectoid Pokemon, determined to break up the fight. Meanwhile, Sam yelled a warning as he threw himself into the brawl.

The attacking Pokemon froze at the sound of Steve's name, then it pulled back the extended claw and nearly fell over backwards, aborting the attack. From close up, Steve could see that there were a two pairs of speedily beating wings on the creature's back, like those of a dragonfly's, which explained how the Pokemon was able to fly.

The insectoid Pokemon grounded itself a short distance away from where Steve was still standing protectively in front of the beagle Pokemon. Beside Steve, Sam remained airborne, ready to strike should aggressions resume.

"Steve?" the attacker asked with Tony Stark's voice.

"Tony?" Steve questioned in turn.

"Great. I'm in a completely different universe and you're still protecting him," Tony growled in frustration as he threw both claws into the air, as though to demand justice from some unknown deity.

Steve stared in confusion, then the Pokemon behind him suddenly spoke with Bucky's voice.

"Steve."

"Bucky?" Steve asked, disbelieving as he turned to look at the black and blue dog.

The Pokemon nodded.

And that was enough to spur Steve to envelope Bucky into a hug.

Thankfully, instead of lashing out, Bucky stood in place, too stunned to react. Tentatively, Steve tightened his embrace.

Thoughts of chasing down Hydra, escaping this world, or tracking down Infinity Stones temporarily fled his mind as Steve wallowed in the knowledge that Bucky was beside him once more. The vise gripping his chest the past few days — or, if Steve was honest with himself, since Bucky went into cryo — eased at the sound of his best friend's voice.

"I hate to break up the tearful reunion, but I think we need some answers," came Clint's voice, foggy and muffled, as though spoken into a scarf.

Looking up, Steve noticed that Clint, Natasha and Wanda appeared at some point and Clint was standing protectively in front of Wanda while Natasha placed herself between Clint and Tony. Sam was back on the ground and his wings were spread apart, positioned awkwardly between Steve and Tony. If the situation wasn't so dire, it'd look absurd.

"Your b—" Tony's voice broke, agitated as he paused to suck in a hissing breath. After regaining his equilibrium, he tried again. "Barnes attacked me first."

"A thing that looked exactly like him attacked me earlier," Bucky responded voice as deadened as Tony's was animated. "I didn't want to risk getting attacked again."

Then, Bucky stepped away and added in Tony's direction, "Sorry."

"Apology accepted," Tony ground out as he lowered his claws and tried to look non-threatening.

Steve resisted the urge to push Bucky behind him again.

"So, what? We're hunky dory now?" Clint asked, his feathers still puffed up and making him look like an absurd Christmas ornament.

"I get it, I screwed up," Tony replied as he turned to face Clint. "I made some calls, not all of them great. Hey, look, I even stopped attacking Barnes."

Tony paused to gesticulate at Bucky, then dropped his claw and continued, "I'm not here to fight. I got sucked into this thing the same time as you did."

"What do you remember?" Steve demanded, cutting into Tony's rambling. He'll feel guilty about the interruption later. "What happened before we got here?"

"What? You don't remember?" Tony turned his attention back to Steve. When Steve nodded, Tony shrugged in resignation.

"Of course you don't remember." Heaving a deep breath, Tony launched into an abridged summary of the events, "You guys somehow lost track of Barnes and the U.N. Committee of Meta-Human Affairs — stop with the face, it's a working title — found out, so I had to come in and make nice with T'Challa, who, by the way, hates me just for existing or being on speaking terms with Ross. It's one or the other. Speaking of which, don't think that Ross doesn't know it was you behind the jail break in the Raft, because he's grilling me over your little stunt, which isn't even fair, since—"

"Get the the point, Tony," Clint grated out before Steve could yell the same.

Instead of getting into a verbal altercation with Clint, Tony thankfully continued his summary, albeit at the same pace as before.

"Like I said, I was trying to keep Ross from getting us into a war with Wakanda, because do you even realize who our Commander in Chief is now? Have you been following the elections? I bet you haven't. Ross probably would've gotten his way if I didn't volunteer to go in to talk to you guys and that's the only reason we're not in the middle of World War III — you're welcome by the way. And what thanks do I get? Find out that you guys have zero idea where Barnes was, because apparently he'd been sucked into this crazy alternate universe based on a hand-held video game, while the rest of you were still sipping mimosas, or whatever that drink is. That thing packs a punch, did I mention that?"

"Tony..." Steve hissed a warning. Clint had already nocked an arrow into his wing and Natasha's eyes had begun twitching in aggravation.

"I'm getting to it," Tony insisted. "As I was saying, we were out there searching for a signal that didn't exist because Barnes is in this world and I've been trying to figure out what the interference signal was, when this big purple asshole—"

"Purple?" This time it was Sam who spoke up.

Tony glared at the interruption then pressed on without comment.

"Yes, purple asshole appeared out of thin air, best as I can guess, or it's some kind of Thor thing, but the point is suddenly there's a fucking wormhole. And don't ask me how I know it's a wormhole, because bending three dimensional space isn't my thing, I'm an engineer not a physicist dammit, but I know when I'm being pushed through an Einstein-Rosen bridge. What I want to know is how the fuck I'm still alive."

Topic thoroughly derailed, Tony finally stopped to take a breath and glared balefully at everyone, like they were responsible for his predicament.

"The 'purple asshole'...what was it?" Sam tried again. He was the only one who managed to follow Tony's torrent of words.

"How the hell would I know? He said some shit about world domination and fate and death blah blah blah. Seriously, why is it that every alien that comes to earth wants to take over the world? Aren't there any other worlds in the universe to over take?"

"Tony, who was with you when...it happened?" Steve urged, trying to stay on track.

"Well, all of you," Tony gestured to include all the humans present, then added, "also Rhodey and Vision. Before you ask, no, I haven't seen them yet. I just got here."

"I don't get it," Natasha interjected, "if we were all teleported here at the same time, why did we arrive at different times? Why does Tony remember the incident but the rest of us don't?"

"I'd like to answer that question, but seeing as what little I did figure out from the Mind Stone was lost after the Ultron fiasco, I don't know," Tony replied, his voice sharp and defensive. He was practically vibrating with unspent energy.

"We're going to have to put that question on the back burner," Steve reminded them and tried to placate the still frustrated Tony. "Right now, Vision and Rhodes might be in this world,, so we need to be on the look out for them. Also, we still have to gather more intel on Hydra."

"Wait, hold up," Tony jumped in, voice starting to go an octave higher as he asked, "What do you mean 'Hydra'?"

Catching Tony up on the situation had been slightly less speedy than the sitrep with Sam. For one, Tony was prone to fits of loud cursing that left the rest of them unsure how to respond, if for no other reason than because they couldn't understand what Tony was trying to say. On the rare occasions when they did understand, there wasn't much to respond to as Tony found increasingly creative ways to curse out all that was under the sun.

Bucky remained silent through the entire debriefing.

It was only after the group had disbanded that Steve managed to find time to corner Bucky for a moment to catch up.

"It fits you," was the first thing out of Bucky's mouth when Steve finally got himself alone with his best friend. Steve blinked in confusion. After a pause, Bucky elaborated, "The Pokemon. You. It suits you."

Steve grimaced. He's heard that particular comment from both Clint and Sam at this point and he still has no idea what he looks like besides resembling a bird of some sort.

Instead of following up, Steve asked, inanely, "How are you?" and regretted the inadequacy of the English language as the words left his beak.

Did you dream while you were in cryo? Did it hurt coming out? Do you remember how you left Wakanda surveillance? How did you get away? How did you come here? Where were you when we went looking? The jumble of questions got stuck in his throat.

Somehow, Bucky seemed to know what Steve actually wanted to ask and answered, "I'm not sure how much I can trust what I remember."

Pausing to give a sardonic smile, Bucky continued, "For once, I'm guessing you don't remember much more than me, either. But...I'm more worried about what I didn't forget."

Steve knew Bucky was referring to the trigger words that the Russians had placed in his head. How much more was buried underneath the surface programming? How many other subconscious orders still laid dormant just waiting to be activated?

Steve understood the threats that the Russian brainwashing posed, he would never have agreed to watch Bucky go under again if he hadn't.

"We can't put you under cryo, not here," Steve told him and Bucky nodded in agreement, like he expected as much. "And we need every capable person to fight."

"Even if it means risking the Winter Soldier?"

"I can take you," Steve scoffed, grinning a bit to soften his tone before losing what little mirth he felt. "You're not a burden, Bucky."

"I sure ain't a boon," Bucky retorted back, looking just as convinced as Steve had ever felt.

If some aspect of Wanda's power came with her into this new world, there was nothing stopping Hydra's mental conditioning from sticking around, too. Until they had a way to accurately assess Bucky's mind, they had no choice but to treat Bucky as if he could turn on them at any moment.

Steve felt his jaw tighten in frustration. There was no way he was going to risk confronting Schmidt with a compromised Bucky and he sure as hell wasn't going to leave Bucky behind. This was as much Bucky's fight now as it was his.

"We'll figure out a way," Steve assured his friend. He wasn't letting Bucky out of his sight this time.